Santa is officially a returning client, and this year he came back with a navigation nightmare.
In an ever-changing world, Santa is finding it harder than ever to make sure his reindeer know where they’re going. With new buildings appearing, flight paths changing, and winter weather becoming more unpredictable, practice runs simply weren’t an option. Add in unreliable North Pole connectivity, the need to stay hidden until Christmas Eve, and Rudolph’s colour blindness – and Santa had quite the brief!
So, for this year’s Informed Solutions Christmas Community of Practice (COP) Challenge, our teams were tasked with designing a solution that would help Santa guide his reindeer safely and efficiently around the world: without practice runs, without reliable signal, and without being spotted.
Communities of Practice at Informed
Our Communities of Practice play a key role in building capability, sharing knowledge, and driving innovation across the organisation. They bring colleagues together around five core disciplines: Delivery Management, DevOps, GIS and Data, Software Development, and User-Centred Design.
Throughout the year, our COPs host regular sessions that encourage learning, debate, and collaboration across teams, and the Christmas Challenge is a highlight in the calendar, offering a chance to put those skills into action in a fun and creative way.
For this year’s festive challenge, four cross-disciplinary teams, made up of colleagues from both delivery services and internal service groups, were asked to create a proof of concept that balanced user needs, technical constraints, and tight delivery milestones. Each solution needed to consider essential service-delivery elements such as data, testing, DevOps, and user-centred design, all wrapped up in a Christmas-themed pitch.
The Challenge
With a £20 million (hypothetical!) budget and a very last-minute deadline from Santa, teams were asked to present how they would:
- Guide reindeer using simple, intuitive commands
- Adapt to blizzards, air traffic, and last-minute route changes
- Operate fully offline
- Provide Santa with clear logs to improve future Christmas deliveries
After plenty of festive discussion, and no shortage of mince pies, each team presented their ideas to the judging panel.
And the Winners Are…
This year’s coveted Informed Bauble went to Team ‘Sant Nav‘.
Their winning concept reimagined Santa’s sleigh as a smart navigation platform, designed to guide Santa and his reindeer safely through even the most challenging conditions. At a high level, Sant Nav combined:
- A digital model of the world to understand rooftops, chimneys, and airspace
- Advanced weather forecasting to help Santa ride favourable winds and avoid turbulence
- Intelligent route optimisation to balance speed, safety, and reindeer wellbeing
Crucially, the solution was designed to work offline, running directly on the sleigh to ensure reliability even in areas affected by poor signal or magical interference.
The team also impressed with their focus on usability, providing Santa with a clear, festive dashboard for quick decision-making, alongside simple visual, audio, and tactile cues to guide the reindeer without complex instructions.
A Festive Thank You
A huge thank you to everyone who took part, shared ideas, and brought Santa’s world to life once again – and to the organisers and judges who made the challenge possible.
We’re already looking forward to more Communities of Practice events and skills development sessions in 2026, and to seeing what problem Santa brings us next year.
Why We Work at Informed
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